orator and a man of the people. In a word, the major was a rising character, and a popular character, and was in a fair way to be sent by the popular party to the State House of New York, if not in the end to Washington itself. But as a man's private prosperity does not always keep pace with his patriotic devotion to public affairs; and as fraudulent transactions have their downs as well as ups; the major was occasionally under a cloud. Hence, just now, Mrs. Pawkins kept a boarding-house, and Major Pawkins rather "loafed" his time away, than otherwise.
"You have come to visit our country, sir, at a season of great commercial depression," said the major.
"At an alarming crisis," said the colonel.
"At a period of unprecedented stagnation," said Mr. Jefferson Brick.
"I am sorry to hear that," returned Martin. "It's not likely to last, I hope?"
Martin knew nothing about America, or he would have known perfectly well that if its individual citizens, to a man, are to be believed, it always is depressed, and always is stagnated, and always is at an alarming crisis, and never was otherwise; though as a body they are ready to make oath upon the Evangelists at any hour of the day or night, that it is the most thriving and prosperous of all countries on the habitable globe.
"It's not likely to last, I hope?" said Martin.
"Well!" returned the major, "I expect we shall get along somehow, and come right in the end."
"We are an elastic country," said the Rowdy Journal.
"We are a young lion," said Mr. Jefferson Brick.
"We have revivifying and vigorous principles within ourselves," observed the major. "Shall we drink a bitter afore dinner, colonel?"
The colonel assenting to this proposal with great alacrity. Major Pawkins proposed an adjournment to a neighbouring bar-room, which, as he observed, was "only in the next block." He then referred Martin to Mrs. Pawkins for all particulars connected with the rate of board and lodging, and informed him that he would have the pleasure of seeing that lady at dinner, which would soon be ready, as the dinner hour was two o'clock, and it only wanted a quarter now. This reminded him that if the bitter were to be taken at all, there was no time to lose; so he walked off without more ado, and left them to follow if they thought proper.
When the major rose from his rocking-chair before the stove and so disturbed the hot air and balmy whiff of soup which fanned their brows, the odour of stale tobacco became so decidedly prevalent as to leave no doubt of its proceeding mainly from that gentleman's attire. Indeed as Martin walked behind him to the bar-room, he could not help thinking that the great square major, in his listlessness and languor, looked very much like a stale weed himself, such as might be hoed out of the public garden with great advantage to the decent growth, of that preserve, and tossed on some congenial dunghill.
They encountered more weeds in the bar-room, some of whom (being
